Download pdf - Crystal Reports - Best Practices in Designing Reports

Coy Yonce & Jaclyn Churcher August 2011

BI203"Best Practices in Designing Effective Reports

©  2011 SAP AG. All rights reserved. 2

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Foundations Introductory Concepts


Cognitive Analysis Aided by Software

“The power of visualization comes from the fact that it is possible to have a far more complex concept structure represented externally in a visual display than can be held in visual and verbal working memories. People with cognitive tools are far more effective thinkers than people without cognitive tools and computer-based tools with visual interfaces may be the most powerful and flexible cognitive systems. Combining a computer-based information system with flexible human cognitive capabilities, such as pattern finding, and using a visualization as the interface between the two is far more powerful than an unaided human cognitive process.”

•  SAP Crystal Reports is one tool that should be leveraged in the pursuit of analyzing information and making informed decisions.

•  Designing effective reports means understanding who will be using them and how that information consumer will be analyzing information.


Directed Analysis versus Exploratory Analysis

Directed Analysis starts with a specific question as a context for information review and arrive at an answer

Exploratory Analysis allows for the exploration of available data which generates a question to be used as the context for information review and arrival at an answer

Stephen Few, Now You See It (Page 83)

•  SAP Crystal Reports is tool which delivers information via the implementation of directed analysis. It is not a data exploration tool.

•  Any analysis capabilities built into reports are pre-defined by the report creator.


Directed Analysis: Overview Pinpoint Details

“Overview first, zoom and filter, then details-on-demand”

•  SAP Crystal Reports provides many directed analysis features to information consumers (e.g., interactive parameters, filtering, sorting, etc…)

•  As a general rule, it is good to start with an overview of the data that an information consumer may require, allow them to pinpoint specific information from the overview, and then drill into more details as they require them.

•  In the context of SAP Crystal Reports, this means starting with an information view that you think satisfies the general information needs of a group of users. An individual can then filter or sort the information. Finally, they can request more details via drilling into a group or subreport.


Aesthetics: An Integral Part of Information Design

“More about the psychological response to sensory stimulus, than the actual trigger.” – Stephen Anderson, Eye Candy is a Critical Business Requirement

Dr. Rolf Hichert, http://www.hichert.com


Aesthetics Creates Trust

Which one do you trust?

Stephen Anderson, Eye Candy is a Critical Business Requirement Stephen Anderson, Eye Candy is a Critical Business Requirement


Types of Reports

Operational

directly support detail oriented processes

line item detail and lots of displayed data

groups and sorts to provide for easier navigation

data displayed via a traditional table or crosstab

group or grand total summaries

Tactical

support short term activities

fewer numbers of pages compared to operational

reports

focus on showing short-term summary data

combination of tables, crosstabs, and charts

drill from summary data to detail where necessary

Strategic

projects further into the future and showing trends deeper

into the past

direct impact on long-term planning

mainly represented visually with textual annotations

highly interactive

mimic the look and feel of a dashboard

Form

provide a mechanism for end users to input data

directly support operational processes

designed specifically for printing or web-based

interaction

personalized content for the intended recipient


Agenda

Information Comparisons

Depth of Understanding

Interference Effects Color and Type Organizational

Strategies

Flexibility versus

Usability

Form Follows Function Continuation De-cluttering Guttenberg

Diagram

Hick’s Law Working Memory

Pre-Attentive Attributes Chunking

Sampling of Best Practice Topics

SAP Crystal Reports for Enterprise

Designer Features

Page Setup Report Sections Groups

Guidelines Format Options Alerts Subreports 1

2

SAP Crystal Reports for Enterprise Features and Options


Page Setup

•  Selecting Paper Size automatically changes the width, height, and margins of either the blank canvas or an open report

•  Leverage Portrait Orientation for longer report and Landscape for fitting more visual information on a single page

•  Appropriate Margins allow for fitting more on a page and for ensuring that information is not cluttered


Report Sections

•  Report Header"Any information to be displayed once at the top of the report

•  Page Header"Any information to be repeated at the top of each page

•  Body"For basic reports, this is the section that provides the most detailed information

•  Report Footer"Any information to be displayed at the end of the report

•  Page Footer"Any information to be repeated at the bottom of each page


Groups

•  Allows the report creator to insert ad hoc hierarchies in a report

•  Provides the information consumer with the ability to go from summary to detailed information as needed

•  Operational, or listing, reports usually require large amounts of data. Leverage multiple groups to provide a gradual drill down to the require level of detail

•  Tactical and Strategic reports can leverage groups to provide a quick way to get a specific region, month, quarter, or any other context


Guidelines

•  Rulers at the top of the design canvas allow the report creator to properly measure the width of fields

•  The new Smart Guidelines feature allows for quickly modify the width and layout of fields in the design canvas

•  Format > Make Same Size command allows for setting multiple selected fields to the same width and/or height


Format Options

•  Quickly accessible field formatting options allow for setting the typeface, alignment, borders, background colors, currency, percentage, and decimals

•  Conditional formatting options available that allow for changing field formatting when a condition arises

•  Available field formatting options for conditional formats are line styles, border, and background color

•  Leverage field formatting for drawing attention to specific fields or areas of report that need attention based on changes in the data


Alerts

•  Alerts allow for triggers to be used as the means for notifying information consumers that an event has occurred

•  These alerts are stored in the report and, when the report is published to the BI Platform, users can subscribe to them

•  Use alerts to reduce the amount of information that your users need to consume by only sending out an alert when something needs attention


Subreports

•  Insert > Subreport command used to quickly insert a subreport into the main report

•  Create a new report against a the current or a new data source OR use an existing report

•  Full subreport, that is either linked to data in the main report or not, can be visible or displayed on demand

•  Subreports are a means of creating hierarchies within a report and for creating visual information displays that require data from multiple, unrelated sources

•  When using subreports for the purpose of creating hierarchies of information it is best to use on demand subreports rather than in place ones

Demo SAP Crystal Reports for Enterprise Features and Options

Sampling of Best Practice Topics in Action


Information Comparisons

Controlling the way the information consumers realize relationships and patterns

Information that is meant to be compared should be presented using a common measure

Information that is meant to be compared amongst many different contexts should be presented on a single display

Information that is being compared against a certain phenomena or past events should be accompanied by benchmark data


Depth of Understanding

Forcing information consumers to analyze information at increasingly deeper levels ensures that they understand and retain information

Shallow Levels of Information Deep Levels of Information


Interference Effects

By presenting elements in your reports that are beyond the expected norms for your audience, you slow down their processing of the information and can impact the effectiveness of their analysis

Go Stop Go Stop

Red Black Pink Green

Orange Purple Yellow Gray Red Black Pink Green

Orange Purple Yellow Gray

OR


Color and Type

Effectively using contrasting foreground and background along with an appropriately chosen and styled typeface not only improves readability for information consumers that have disabilities for your entire audience

vs.

vs.


Organizational Strategies

Organizing information based on a dimension allows information consumers to quickly understand patterns and relationships. For example, you can categorize information the way that I did earlier on the slide where I showed the Types of Reports.

For reference or nonlinear lookup

Alphabetical

Comparing chronological events

Time

Geographical relevance

Location

Sorted information

Continuum

Clustering based on similarities

Category


Flexibility versus Usability

If your information consumers can anticipate their needs, then a usable report is more important than one that is flexible in its design and available information.

Flexibility

Usability


Form Follows Function

The design of your information, or report, becomes beautiful as its usability becomes definite and there is an absence of ornamentation.

Beauty in design results from purity of function


Continuation

By arranging informational points in your reports along a continuous line or curve, your information consumers will perceive those elements informational points as a group.

OR


De-Cluttering

Removal of the “junk”, or unnecessary elements, within your reports will make them easier to consume and will, in turn, make it easier for information consumers to make decisions with those reports.


Gutenberg Diagram

The Gutenberg diagram defines a pattern for how individuals will read evenly distributed, homogeneous information on a printed page (e.g., book) or in a digital format (e.g., web page). For Western readers, they naturally start at the top right and then move across and down.


Hick’s Law

The time required to make a decision increases with the number of available options. For example, an increase in the number of road signs that need to be read by a driver causes in increase in the amount of time taken to decide which route to use.


Working Memory

Working memory (i.e., short term memory) defines the ability to actively hold information in the mind needed to do complex tasks such as reasoning, comprehension, and learning. Humans are only capable of remembering those things to which we explicitly pay attention. Even then, we are only capable of retaining a specific amount of information in short term memory.

Highlighting Sorting Filtering


Pre-Attentive Attributes

“We perceive several basic attributes of visual images pre-attentively, that is, prior to and without the need for conscious awareness.” Stephen Few, Now You See It (Page 38)


Chunking

Chunking refers to how information can be grouped together so that it is easier for information consumers to remember. First presented by George Armitage Miller in The Magical Number Seven, Plus or Minus Two: Some Limits on our Capacity for Processing Information.

678 – 575 – 8916

Group information into smaller groups

Grouping

Locate a pattern in the information

Patterns Categorize information based on a context or its meaning

Organizing

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Questions


Further Information

SAP Public Web: SAP Developer Network (SDN): www.sdn.sap.com/irj/boc/crystalreports SAP BusinessObjects Community (BOC): www.boc.sap.com Idea Place: cw.sdn.sap.com/cw/community/ideas/businessanalytics/crystalreports

Related SAP Education and Certification Opportunities http://www.sap.com/education/


Further Information

External Sources: Stephen Few: http://www.perceptualedge.com/

Rolf Hichert: http://www.hichert.com/

Edward Tufte: http://www.edwardtufte.com/tufte/

Ben Shneiderman: http://www.cs.umd.edu/~ben/

William S. Cleveland: http://www.stat.purdue.edu/~wsc/

Colin Ware: http://ccom.unh.edu/vislab/colin_ware.html

Stephen P. Anderson: http://poetpainter.com/

Jacques Bertin: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacques_Bertin

John Maeda: http://lawsofsimplicity.com/

Leo Babauta: http://zenhabits.net/

Feedback Please complete your session evaluation. Be courteous — deposit your trash, "and do not take the handouts for the following session.

Thank You!

Contact information: Jaclyn Churcher Coy W. Yonce, III Product Owner Product Owner, SAP Crystal Reports


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